


You Know Who You Are

by scribblesandscreeds



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Missing Scene, Oneshot, blatant but appropriate theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 19:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10905708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblesandscreeds/pseuds/scribblesandscreeds
Summary: Why didn't Chief Tui burn the canoes?





	You Know Who You Are

It was with a heavy and astounded heart that Tui prepared to bid his mother farewell. She had seemed immortal, and no matter how many elders he had buried, he had never quite believed in his heart that she would one day join them. Until this day, only the whiteness of her hair had even hinted at her age - she had never stopped dancing, never stopped weaving, never heeded his pleas that she not wade out quite so far into the water to fish lest a wave take her feet from under her. Now she lay on her sleeping mat and barely moved, and her smile had left her lips.

Moana, his brave, clever, stubborn Moana, knelt by her side. He could not bear to look. Gone was the fiery chief-in-waiting who openly defied her father and sought to thrust herself into deadly peril, and in her place was a child trying to deny that her grandmama could die. He made an excuse not to look. Demanded in whispers to know what could be done for her, how the inevitable could be prevented. He placed an arm around his wife's waist and only she knew how tightly he held on to her.

He heard their whispers and a surge of grief and gratitude filled his breast. Despite knowing that she was not long for this world, Tala was comforting Moana; telling her another story about Maui. He wished he could be comforted by such a tale. He wished a lot of things could be like legends. He wished he could journey to Pulotu and beg Makeatutara not to allow his mother to pass. He wished that he could haul on the sun's rays to pull it back and stop it from setting on her.

His daughter ran from the hut. He did not hear her sob, and silently applauded her control. Sina said nothing, but stood with him until he took Moana's place by his mother. It wasn't until afterwards that he realised that she had gone after their daughter.

"Tui." 

"Mama." He pressed his forehead to hers, and as their breath mingled, wished as hard as he had ever wished anything that he could breathe his life and strength into her.

"She's going to do it, son." She raised her head and looked him in the eye, her smile - still mischievous behind its apparent serenity - back on her face as if it had never left. "Moana will find Maui, and make him restore the heart of Te Fiti, and all will be well again. I'm telling you, as your mother, to be proud of her. She will save us all."

Tui closed his eyes and held her hand tight, and did not tell her that it was just a story.

"She will, Tui. She will."

 

He left the wailing and keening behind him in a state of shock. He had to find his daughter. Tell her that - tell her that it was over. Tell her how the lamps had blazed brightly, then burnt out, as her grandmama left her body behind. His feet took him on the path to the beach without his needing to tell them where to go. He could barely see, and was almost upon his wife before he knew she was there. Sina walked up the path, towards him, quickening her step at the glistening of his cheeks to wrap her arms around him.

"She's gone." It was not a question. She had seen the stingray made of stars that swam down through the air to the sea.

"Where is Moana?"

Sina said nothing. It had not been a question.

 

The rocks were treacherous in the dark, and his feet slipped several times before he reached the blocked up entrance to the cave. Formerly blocked up. When he pulled the vines aside, he saw a space, as he knew he would, which was large enough to admit a young girl. He wedged his torch in a gap between two stones and with a strength that might have surprised him if he had thought about it, hauled boulders out of the way to make the passage wide enough to admit a large man.  
  
He knew exactly where he was by the rushing of the waterfall in the blackness of the cave. At first he could not see a thing, but as he held his torch above his head his eyes adjusted, and there they were.

It was just as he remembered. Canoes, scores of enormous, magnificent canoes. They took his breath away as they had all those years ago, when he had been young and reckless, and thought he could go beyond the reef. For a moment he forgot his grief and his anger. They called to him, and he yearned to answer the call, to sail away and find out what the distance had to show him.

Then he saw the empty space where the smallest waka used to be, the scars in the sand leading down to the water's edge, and remembered why he was there. He saw footprints, Moana's footprints, and his rage returned.

"You're going to get her killed!" he shouted at the boats. "You've tempted her out onto the ocean, just like you tempted me - and she will die! My daughter will die!"

The canoes had been sitting up on the sand, out of the water, for a long time. He went to the nearest waka to set fire to it, but hesitated. It should be tinder-dry. Still, there might be spray from the waterfall, keeping it damp, he might need to bring kindling to get them to burn. He touched its hull to check-

-and all the torches on all the canoes ignited.  
  
**"You have forgotten who you are."**

The words came from all around. Tui scrambled back, away from the boat, dropping his torch.

"No." he whispered. "How could I?"

 **"You have forgotten us, and so, forgotten who you are. Look inside yourself, Tui."** said a cacophony of voices. He threaded his way between the vessels, the individual voices rising and falling until he realised that each canoe had its own. The hugest scolded him resonantly - the littlest barely whispered. But they all spoke as one. **"Your people are more than what they have become. You must take us beyond the reef and _sail_."**

"How can I go past the reef? I'm not who I used to be!" Once, maybe - but he had learnt caution, at a great cost. He was no longer the fearless youth who had commandeered a boat with his best friend to explore the horizon, and come back alone. Even the suggestion of fishing beyond the reef paralysed him with fear. Sail away from the island? Leave Motonui? That was madness! 

**"Remember who you are! You are a voyager! You are a wayfinder! Remember who you are!"**

The voices rose to a crescendo, the torches flared, the sails rippled - then he was alone again, in the darkness, with nothing but a dying echo to say that there had ever been voices at all.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a little bit of an experiment. I wrote it entirely on Ao3, it has not touched a word processor. And for once, I managed to finish a thing more or less in one go!


End file.
